Letters to the Editor
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Unfinished Business
Kudos to LW for buiding a relationship, a business, and a future for a kid. She's gone well above the call of duty, she could have left the car in the slums and the partner in the slammer, and thus not incurred thousands of dollars of direct debt (as well as indirect costs for babysitters, etc). So, LW has already done more than the requisite.
So now that Partner is in a rehap (finishing out the 28 days that insurers will cover) awaiting a return to - what. In fact, the issue is not LW leaving her partner. LW has whatever shared residence they have, she has the business, and most critically, she has the kid. The issue is what the Parnter will return to. A boarding house room or to "home"?
I can understand the grating nature of 12-step programs. A careful read of the AA steps reveals a dynamic conflict between a "disease model" and a "salvation model", one that the explanatory language with the steps hardly resolves.....A simplistic read would suggest that one embrace a chronic illness and find freedom via a spiritual awakening via profound contact with a higher power of one's choice. The language is so hinky that when I went sober, I avoided AA like the plauge. I've not had a drink in 14 years. While I have no doubt about the power of 12-step process, I would credit more to the power of peer support than the archaic, stilted language of the steps.
LW has a couple of issues... Paramount is whether she can or wants to, work through her feelings of anger with her partner. Has she told her partner exactly how she feels in really blunt language? Has she unburdened to someone close about how revolting this is? How tiresome, how costly and how utterly inappropriate? I sense a strong undercurrent of anger in LW's letter, and frankly, that anger is legitimate. Her partner screwed up, bigtime. The question is what is behind the anger. Is it just the screw-up and the attendant unrest and fiscal insanity? or are there feeligns of anger and frustration that come from a relationship that was not, perhaps, all that LW might have hoped for some time. LW needs to find out.
After LW understands and even embraces her own appropriate outrage, she then has a basis to take an objective look at the relationship she has, and an objective review of the partner that will be shortly checking out of rehab. My guess is that the life that LW has built has more to do with LW than the partner, and that LW can rock on with her good self and her kid in tow and continue to live a decent, rewarding life without a partner of the moment.
Just a sidebar about "bottoming out". It is an expressed belief in AA and NA that one must bottom out in some mythic way. What they are really discussing is the moment that the individual owns their addictive behavior and seeks to remediate it. Some never do, and yoyo into/out of rehab faciities with dramatic ease. Frankly, I bottomed out with booze long before it affected my relationship and my work; I confess that I have never "made amends", I have not had a "spiritual awakening" and I haven't touched booze for 14 or 15years..... . However, LW's partner's claim to be in the wrong place at the wrong time does not bode well, it expresses a rather dismissive perception of what happened, one that styles LW';s partner as a victim, not the causitive force. IF LW's partner cannot move out of that victim mentality, she is doomed to stay locked into a cycle of self-defending self-perpetuating behavior.
I note that embracing ownership of the problem of addiction in no way requires an understanding of it as an addiction, a disease or a phenominum. It is a condition, it is a behavioral pattern. Once the pattern ceases, then one can focus on causitive forces,. In the light of sobriety, one can spend years, as I have, teasing out the malignancies of a childhood, or whatever. LW's partner is not there yet.
I would counter some of the recommendatons of others and suggest that LW continue to attend meetings and family sessions with her partner, when it suits her schedule. But, she might want to do it with a different mindset in place - what does the session do for her? Has she said what she wants to say? has her partner heard her sense of outrage and anger and frustration and acknowledged it in any way? With that mindset shift in place, LW can use these sessions to build herself an emotional pathway out of the relationship that is guilt free, or she can use it to rebult a somewhat tattered relationship. My money is on the former, frankly.
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Watch out for your child, too.
It is very unusual that your son hasn't asked about his other mom. Sit down and talk to him-- there are all kinds of questions probably going on in his little head, or your wife has been so distant and stress-causing he's relieved-- or both. He may be blaming himself for your wife's sudden disappearance. He may well need some counseling.
I would take a careful look at your legal options. You may well be able to take advantage of your wife's turn in rehab (and her tango with the courts) to gain some time and perspective on everything. Right now, I'd guess you're in the honeymoon period of her absence; you may start missing her later on. (Alternately, since you can often be held accountable for a spouse's drug-related activities on your property, you may have to make a quick break for the sake of your child.) I think you're well within your rights to leave, and it might be the best thing for all of you-- but I'd warn you to think it over. Good luck, and take care.
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Uh-uh
"For better or for worse," doesn't apply here. Drug addiction may be a disease, but it's not the same kind of disease as, say, breast cancer. That promise is for getting people to hang on when things are tough, not for getting people to subject themselves to mistreatment. The drug user abandoned this relationship a long time ago when she chose to deal with her problems in such a reckless way. For fuck's sake! Heroine!?! And all she has to say for herself is, "I didn't do it?" Secret hard drug habit has to be up there with the worst forms of relationship treason. It's not like her drinking slowly slipped out of control. Think illegal. Think black market. Think coded telephone conversations and meetings with dubious people in scary places. How disorienting would it be to find out that your partner was up to all of that behind your back while you were taking up her slack? It's unimaginable.
All the LW is obligated to do now, is just say no to the lying and manipulation that will be used to try to convince her that it's not over. Even if there is reconciliation in the future, the only sane response to this situation at the present time is tough love, as tough as it gets.